I think it's mostly congress's fault. They told the patent office to basically approve anything that didn't have prior art in the form of an existing patent for the exact same thing.
That's not how the USPTO operates. I know because I'm a former USPTO examiner. Prior art is not restricted to existing patents. I've used YouTube videos, webpages, academic papers, other patents/applications, and probably more.
Also, it doesn't need to be exactly the same thing. Obviousness/103 rejections are probably the most common. (The legal definition of obviousness doesn't correspond exactly to the colloquial definition, by the way.)
The main problem is my view is the very limited time examiners get. If it's not found fast, it's probably not going to be found.
Abstract: The present invention relates to a sandwich assembly tool and methods of making a sandwich, which may be a hot or cold sandwich, quickly by pre-assembly of various sandwich components and simultaneous preparation of different parts of the same sandwich. The sandwich assembly tool is composed of a member preferably having one or two cavities for containing a quantity of garnish. The cavities are used for the assembly of the sandwich. The tool may have a raised ridge adjacent one or both cavities for placement against the hinge of a bread component. Methods of making a sandwich] are disclosed. The methods may include one or more of the use of preasseribled sandwich fillings, assembly of garnishes in advance of a customer's order or while ether portions of the sandwich are being heated using the sandwich assembly tool, the simultaneous heating of a bread component and the sandwich filling, placing the bread component over the tool containing garnish, and inverting the tool and bread combination to deposit the sandwich garnish onto the bread component.
... and then in 2022, McDonald's applied for 10 metaverse-related patents to allow it to deliver food online and in person, offer entertainment services...
The WIPO document you linked to is not a patent. The WIPO's opinion (available on Espacenet and elsewhere) is that the claims are not novel or non-obvious. There is an associated US patent application, but the USPTO rejected the application. Looks to me like the international and US patent systems worked fine here.
I see people on HN confusing patent applications and granted patents too frequently. People can write basically whatever they want to in applications, and do.
I don't have time to look at the others, but you should check if patents were actually granted, and if they were, look at the "Notice of Allowance" in Patent Center to see the examiner's reasoning. In my experience, you'll usually find a small detail in the claims that the prior art lacked.
Thanks, and "searching the patent prosecution history" is a skill that you can't explain in a few seconds. Even if I went to the trouble of finding a PTO rejection based on non-patent prior art, most people wouldn't bother reading it. Or would argue about it.
It IS true that non-patent art is incompletely searched by examiners the world over, but it's not the case that it isn't searched at all.
You don't think it was an attempted abuse of the (US and worldwide) patent system that McDonald's tried to patent something that was obvious, non-novel and already being made for half a century? Seems pretty shameless.
Not everyone who attempts to file a patent is an inventor. Some are nuisances, some are outright trolls.
We could cite patents that were actually granted that should have failed obviousness.
I don't like this practice at all. Patent examiners see applicants claiming things that they likely believe isn't allowable all the time. When done in bad faith it's called "inequitable conduct" [1]. Keep in mind that as an examiner, I couldn't reject them for that, so I just found prior art to reject them with.
